Photographer’s iPhone records its own falls from a plane, survives 13 months in Icelandic wilderness

While he was on an aerial photo tour over Iceland in August last year, photographer Haukur Snorrason was filming the view through an airplane window with his iPhone 6s Plus. He dropped the phone, which was smashed and lost in the Icelandic wilderness forever. Or at least that’s what he thought. The phone was recovered 13 months later, and not only it survived the fall, but it even recorded it.

According to National Post, Haukur was flying about 200 feet (60m) above the ground when the wind tore the phone out of his hand. That’s not a big height, but most of our phones got broken by falling from our hands onto the floor. Plus, the area was flooded and Haukur couldn’t reach it, so he didn’t really keep his hopes up. Still, he tried contacting a local farmer to see whether they could spot his lost phone, but he was out of luck.

This September, 13 months after losing his phone, Haukur received a call to notify him that his iPhone had been found. It turned out that a couple of hikers spotted it as they were walking in the area. They contacted the landowners, and they realized that it was his phone when they connected it to the computer and it said “Haukur’s iPhone.”

Upon recovering the phone, Haukur found a video of its own fall from the airplane – the video you can see above. But how on Earth did the phone survive? Well, Haukur believes that there are two main factors to it. First, it landed on a thick moss that grows in the area. It can be up to 30cm thick, as he explained to The Next Web. Another reason is that the phone landed face down, so the protective plastic case was facing up and protected it from the elements. The phone still works 13 months later, only the microphone is broken so people can’t hear Haukur when he makes a phone call.

And I thought my old Nokia 3310 was tough.

[via PetaPixel]